


Last Chance

by Benedicthiddleston



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Death, Drabble, Execution, M/M, Transporter Malfunction, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 09:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10918968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benedicthiddleston/pseuds/Benedicthiddleston
Summary: The transporter malfunctions and Jim finds himself on Earth accused of witchcraft in another century altogether.





	Last Chance

There was a quiet resonance about him, if he thought about it too long. But that was all he had – time and too much thought to let him sleep. The cell was dark, it was too cold to sleep due to the shivering he was experiencing, and the damn pile of hay and worn cloth was uncomfortable and smelled of mold.

He blamed the transporter for this. It had _not_ set him inside of the _Enterprise_ Bridge like he had requested of Lieutenant Commander Scott. Instead, he had materialized in the dark of night on a roof in what Jim had quickly determined was eighth century Europe on Earth. Hundreds and hundreds of years before his _own_ timeline. To his right was a grassy field and towering forest to the left. Before him was a sprawling town made of mud, wood, and stone.

He had tried to communicate with his ship in secret, to see if Scotty could do anything to beam him back to his own damn century and _fast_. But the locals had found him and in a very old language, yelled at him about being – of all fucking things – a witch. His communicator, the universal translator, and his malfunctioning phaser were taken from him and inspected. The fervid yells of a witch in town spread faster than the flames Jim was sure to encounter in the morning.

Now he was lying in a shitty cell awaiting his own execution. They hadn’t even given him a chance to try to talk. They had dragged him before the head of the town and with the word of a witch in their midst, the whole town cried for his death. They wanted nothing to do with witchcraft and the strange clothing and strange items Jim had in his possession. His death was going to come. Not in a warp core. Not by the hands of a Romulan, or his Vulcan lover during Pon Farr, or even at the hands of their most hated enemies: the Klingon empire. Nope, Jim was going to be tied to a rough piece of wood – a damn pole – and fire would turn his flesh into ash.

He felt somewhat detached from the situation. How had such a transporter malfunction even happen? Unless he was dreaming this mistake and he was locked inside the transporter stream waiting to be rematerialized back on his beautiful ship surrounded by the love of his life and his family and friends. But Jim was a calculating guy, and he kind of knew that it was unlikely. He would feel far more – broken then he felt right then. All he felt was a sense of foreboding danger. He was _tired_ , damn it. This was becoming a habit, his brushes with death increasing with the territory of being Captain of the _USS Enterprise_ and his newfound hope and love in his First Officer, Commander Spock. They lived a risky life. It didn’t really help that Jim was always seeming to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He closed his eyes, sighing softly. Maybe finally he would die and gain peace. He had died four times in his life, if you looked at the clinical aspect of it all. Bones would say he had died more like a hundred times, but Jim had technically clinically died from anaphylactic shock when he was three, he had died emotionally on Tarsus IV, died again in the warp core on the _Enterprise_ , and then died again from an encounter with the Klingons and a nasty abdominal knife wound. But medicine had brought him back to life each and every time. Granted, his miracle revival from Khan’s blood after the warp core incident had been the most jarring of them all, they had all though Jim would be dead long before now. Now, lying in a stone cell, waiting for some end.

Maybe he did want this. Maybe he just wanted to die. He had thought about it before. He had been a suicidal nutcase right before being sent to Tarsus IV and then after Tarsus IV, his mother had officially written him off as a loner who was going to commit suicide no matter what she did. No wonder she hated him. But then he had become Captain of the _Enterprise_. And hope had been reborn in his heart. He wanted to live for them, for the adventure of it all, and then Spock - the perfect love Jim had never expected.

But that was all fruitless now. The transporter had malfunctioned and Jim was going to die. And somewhere, in his fast beating heart and quick mind, he had long ago accepted his time ending much sooner than he had expected. His luck had run out. He just wish he could have said good-bye to Spock first. Anything to kiss him Vulcan style one last time and promise him everything would be okay. Jim wished he could feel the warmth of his lover’s bond within his mind – but the distance and the time travel and malfunction meant Jim had a silent mind. He had no pain himself, but he could only imagine what Spock was going through right then – not being able to hear or feel his t’hy’la. And once Jim did fall into the world no one could follow him into – eternal damnation, he was pretty sure – would the bond break entirely? Would Spock feel it break upon his ultimate death?

Just thinking about causing Spock pain made Jim’s stomach clench painfully. He felt nauseous. He felt sweaty and started to hyperventilate.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he whispered to himself, his breath catching in his throat. He felt like he was suffocating, barely able to reach the surface of a watery grave. In the far reaches of his mind, he knew he was having a panic attack. The idea of Spock suffering threw Jim over the edge and the nausea rose further. He leaned onto his side and vomited onto the blackened dirt floor, losing only bile. The dry heaving came and lasted for what seemed like forever.

When his body felt spent, Jim was shivering all over, teeth chattering. He took hard breaths and struggled to keep it all under control. The tears at his eyes were both from the silent crying and the force of the vomiting.

He was scared. But he knew he had to accept this. He went limp in the pile of straw, eyes slits, breathing still ragged. He was going to die. And there was nothing more he could do about it. _Spock, oh Spock…_

* * *

They dragged him from the cell just as the first rays of sun broke the horizon. Jim desperately tried to hold it in his memory, hoping he could focus on that rather than what was about to happen to him.

He had given up fighting them, the reality of his situation crushing him. He had faced death so many times before, but this time it would be final. His chest ached for his t’hy’la.

His eyes saw all the faces intent on seeing his death as they essentially carried him to the center of the village, the wooden stake looming before them. He was pushed to his knees before the pile of brush and tree limbs, his head forced to bow as someone in the crowd started yelling a prayer. Jim had never been religious, but his mind hoped beyond hope that some higher being saved his teeny human ass from a slow, torturous death.

The prayer finished and Jim was pulled to his feet and manhandled into place, his back shoved up against the stake, his hands forced to his chest, and rough rope tied around his waist. A second rope was looped around his wrists to secure them into a praying formation, which then also circled around his chest and the stake. His executioners stepped back and a few bystanders threw more wood onto the pile, trapping Jim in the center.

He gulped, his eyes searching the crowd before him for any familiar faces. But he knew, even before his eyes finished searching, that there would be none. He would die alone, in a foreign world, in a completely different century.  

Someone yelled that the witch before them had to be cleansed, and the only way to do that was to burn. That was the signal for four different men standing nearby to step forward and lower their torches to the dry kindling. Jim’s eyes were glued to the torch directly in front of him, the fire flickering and catching onto the kindling.

The flames caught quickly and surrounded Jim in an instant. He was smothered in smoke as the wood burned. He didn’t know what would kill him first – the smoke or the flames.

He tried to struggle in his bindings, fear gripping his mind. But he could not escape the inevitable - the flames came closer and closer, the smoke clouding his vision and mucking up his lungs. Jim wished for unconsciousness, but it wouldn’t come.

Fire leapt up and around him, singing his hair and burning his feet. He cried out for mercy, but his pleas were ignored. Jim felt the pain of the flames and the heat suffocating his air.

He became listless, sagging in his bonds. His mind drifted as his body shut down.

He saw a familiar face.

_Spock…_

“Spock?”

**Author's Note:**

> IDK, I wrote this during NaNo and eh. I like angst. Plus this seems to be always in my head. Jim -_-


End file.
